Where Darkness Dwells
by Emmy the Writer
Summary: Though a budding mage of Dalaran and the heir to House Ashcroft, last of the Alterac nobles, Ebony thirsts for knowledge far beyond what the Kirin Tor will teach. On the behest of the recipient of a failed summoning, she descends into darker arts...
1. Chapter 1

Where Darkness Dwells

Prologue

She kicked out at the hungering hands, but their grip was far stronger than her frail body could hope to match against. Her cloth robe tore at the shoulder seam, revealing a sliver of her ghostly white flesh, while the insistent hands, sticky with the pallor of death, found a tight hold around her waist and under her arm, completely immobilizing the vulnerable girl. She sighed and went limp in the grip, consenting to be dragged down the gloomy corridor.

_Two weeks earlier_

"So, I think this time we will try… which do you prefer, the green or the muted purple?" He asked, holding up the two dresses. "I'm more partial to the green, myself, but it's your choice, Miss Ashcroft."

"The purple's fine," she said irritably, watching the dressmaker go off into the back room to re-hang the green, and her hearing picked up his whispered disapproval as to her current clothing. All dark shades, making her ghostly white skin look even unhealthier, dark bags under her steely gray eyes, reeking of magic. Her mother sat beside her, aristocratic nose perpetually sticking up into the air, looking down upon her eldest daughter with disappointment.

"How are your studies going?" She asked stiffly, long fingers clasped around her purse. "You look tired, Ebony, dear."

"I have much to do," she replied vaguely, leaning back on the soft chair of the musty shop, frowning. Whenever she got home, her mother would insist they did things together. Shopping, taking tea, sewing. Things that she detested, but the silent threat of an end to the freedom she was given in Dalaran hovered. "Study eats up my time."

"I do wish you'd come home more often. The Manor is very empty without you or your younger siblings," she fanned her face with one carefully manicured hand. "It doesn't help that all you father does now is sit in his study and plot."

"Ma'am," the dressmaker returned with the purple dress, holding it like it was made from spun gold. "Would you like it delivered to Manor Ashcroft or will you take it now?"

"Deliver it, please. We have more to do today." Her mother pulled a small pouch of coins from her purse, counting out the gold like it were bark or stone, nothing of value. She pressed the neat stack into the tailor's soft hands and they exited the shop, the dusty bell ringing out with a muffled chime. "Really, the green was nicer."

Ebony sighed and touched her coal-black hair, making sure that it was still in the clip she had received as a gift from a suitor last year. It was beautiful, ornately jeweled in the semblance of an owl (she was, after all, a student in Dalaran, where knowledge classified as an attractive quality), but she had chased him off as soon as he'd tried to get serious. She didn't want to settle down and become a stiff like her mother, all alone in a big, expensive house with too much money and not enough to do.

"Why do you enjoy dark colours so? They wash you out completely." The older woman said irritably, her eyes roaming Southshore in search of another shop to buy something useless in. Ebony stayed silent, which was the best way to kill conversation with her mother. If you let her, she'd go on and on, making up for all the conversations that she'd been denied over the past year or two, depending on when the mages told Ebony she had to go home and get some rest.

Though Dalaran was hanging over Northrend now, the few mages that stayed behind kept a constant portal going for students to ferry to and from through, one of which was not far at all from Manor Ashcroft, set as it was surrounded by protective hills in the countryside of Alterac, near the crater that had once held the city of the Kirin Tor. Having had nothing to do with Perenolde and his treachery during the Second War, the small fiefdom remained unscathed by the razing of Alterac and continued to act as a goading symbol of the old days to the broken noble houses force to form the Syndicate, as they were fully under Alliance protection.

Ebony herself was partway through her training as a mage and highly dissatisfied with her life. Dalaran was as stiff as her mother, the teachers utterly boring and unwilling to stray a page off the textbooks, the students stuck-up and self-important. To make up for it, she buried herself in other books, older books, which spoke of marvelous things that magic could really be used for. Tales wilder than the flora of Stranglethorn Vale, that filled her with a deep lust, an abnormal yearning for something more than she had.

"Shall we?" he mother gestured at a small shop, situated as far away from the inn as possible, from which Ebony could hear raucous laughter and the clink of mugs even down the street. It was nearing sunset, so all the fighters would have come back and be getting royally drunk before nightfall, forgetting that their lives were constantly on the line. A part of her wanted to go in, but she would find vagrants and ne'er-do-wells, she knew, and the upper-class part of her was disgusted. Sighing again, she followed her mother into the little teashop, the smell of old people and different brews thick on the air. This was the only place selling food that her mother would enter in Southshore, stating that the other ones were horribly unclean.

They sat down on the cushioned chair and her mother ordered the house tea, no sugar, no milk. Just like her, bitter and hard. In a move to be deliberately mischievous, Ebony ordered a hot cocoa, extra cream, sugar and chocolate.

"That's a little much, dear," he mother warned, but she just smiled vacantly. "Though with your figure, you should be eating more." That much was true, she supposed. Study made no time for big meals.

They sipped their drinks in silence, Ebony enjoying the thick, scalding cocoa as it slid down her throat, bringing rare colour to her cheeks. All she wanted was to be back in her small study, poring over a guilty book she had stashed under her bed: A Return to Basic Shadowcasting by Keiryn Darkbound. She wasn't a warlock and didn't want to be- demons interested her minimally. It was the huge question of Death that took up much of her free time, filling her hugely expansive mind with infinite and dizzying possibilities, whispers of greatness that barely tickled what she was learning now. She daren't voice her curiosity to anyone else; necromancy was a heavily forbidden art, especially with the onslaught of the scourge, but she could hardly bare to stay bored any longer.

Curiosity was going to kill her, one day.

They exited the shop and it was then, when the sun began to dip under the Hillsbrad Foothills, that her mother decided to call it a day. They walked swiftly back to the waiting carriage, seeing the stable-hand snoring on the roof, his cap covering his soft face. Rapping on the side of the carriage, the older woman woke him abruptly, and he scrambled down, apologizing profusely.

"Take us home, Connor," she said. "I am weary." He nodded quickly and roused the horse, the powerful creature snorting softly before she was calmed by Connor's gentle touch. If the boy hadn't such a connection with animals, his laziness and impertinence would have had him fired long ago. Quickly harnessing the horse, he closed the carriage door before hopping up on the front and jerking the coach into motion.

"Have you received word from Rebecca and Cefflan?" Ebony asked, thinking about her two younger siblings, down in Stormwind. They had come for a visit a month before, but she had missed it, unaware. Unlike her mother, Rebecca was outgoing and moved with a purposeful mien, and was also undoubtedly the prettiest of the family, with her father's curly auburn hair and mother's blue eyes. Cefflan had the same black as Ebony, but his was bouncy and wavy, not slick-straight.

"They sent me a letter upon reaching Stormwind safely," the older woman said. "They will be visiting again perhaps mid-next year."

"I'll have to time my visit appropriately," Ebony agreed, her thoughts flitting back to her book, and the fact that she wouldn't see it for another three days. "Perhaps when we get home, could I peruse the library?"

"Ask your father," was her response. She'd have nothing to do with the place, stating it gave her the chills. In reality, Lady Ashcroft hated reading with a passion, because people in books always got the good end of the deal, they got to go away on adventures and campaigns, and she was stuck in her loveless marriage and dusty manor. Ebony had been practicing scrying spells one day and was struck with the idea to find out what her mother was thinking, and this was what she had found out. Guiltily, she had done this several more times to other members of her family, even though scrying someone unaware or unwilling was illegal. Their thoughts and desires disturbed her more than her own.

Rebecca was madly in love with Connor, the stable-hand. Cefflan was having trouble sleeping, terrified of malicious nightmares that plagued him with visions of his family and friends, dead but not, grinning from behind lifeless eyes as they ransacked his body. Ebony had watched with sordid fascination one evening as this played out, staring in her own eyes. She had not been a mindless ghoul, which was worse- her brother had dreamed of her as a madly cackling necromancer, directing her once-family with the fervor of madness. The frightening thing about his vision was that it was something that she had thought about, herself- necromancy, but she'd never dream of harming her own family with it. She had looked past herself, guilty that her avatar was tormenting Cefflan so, to her father, hollow, sitting at his desk and crying to himself in an alcohol-induced depression. He was deeper embroiled in the silent war that raged through the north than she had cared to imagine.

Her mother, for all her effort, was failing to keep the façade of a normal family up.

When they returned to Manor Ashcroft, Ebony made a beeline for the study, thinking to quickly ask her father or permission and then ransack the library for any interesting books. She knocked thrice on the hard, lacquered paneling and a weary "Come in," came from the other side. She pushed the heavy door open as it squeaked on rusty hinges, and came into the study, lit in a dying orange that set the square contours of her father's haggard face in a soft, golden light. "Ebony," he said, smiling through his grey beard.

"Can I go in the library?" she asked hastily, eyeing the empty canteen of whiskey on his desk and his heavily lidded eyes. She didn't particularly want to talk to him that much, seeing him inebriated. He used to be a smart, quick-witted man with a firm grasp on his life, but he'd let things around him slip too much. The Syndicate got ever closer, and Southshore and the Alliance were becoming more alienated from the last nobles of Alterac by the year. Soon, they would be left to themselves, at the mercy of those they once dominated, and all her father could do was drink and reminisce about when everything was going fine.

"Of course, my darling, why not? Don't you want to sit with your father? We can talk about your schooling… how is Dalarama?"

"Dalaran." She crisply corrected him, hand gripping the door handle. "Going fine, father. I have much to read, I must take my leave."

"Ebony, dear, don't leave…" he pushed himself out of the study chair and promptly remembered that he had no balance and toppled back onto the desk. Ebony looked at him with a mixture of pity and disgust before quietly leaving, the door clicking shut. The rich, dark red carpet sucked her feet in as she padded down the endless corridors, hung with expensive paintings, legendary weapons, and the like. She cared not for old things that were useless; knowledge was what she thought of as most important.

The library of Manor Ashcroft has once been the envy of all Alterac, though now it laid gathering dust, having no active collector or reader of books in the residence. In her younger days, Ebony had curled up on one of the chaise longues with a book for hours on end; the only sound in the cavernous room her breathing. It brought a warm torrent of familiarity to her and she ran her long, pale fingers over the rows and rows of tomes, lightly perusing for one to read. Or, that was what she hoped it looked like. In reality, she was looking to see if they had a copy of A Return to Basic Shadowcasting.

Being an avid reader, she found herself unable to resist the heavy tomes in the silent room, and many hours quickly passed as she lost her purpose and ended up engrossed in a first edition copy of Medivh's memoirs. Indeed, he was her idol, standing out amongst all other mages in history as not only one of the most powerful but also the most interesting. His inner battle with Sargeras sent tingles through her fingers as she grasped the page, almost seeing the very scene herself, from behind his eyes, feeling as he had felt. Eventually, she set the memoir down and returned to the shelves.

Though she had completely forgotten that she was actively looking for it, her stomach did an excited flip when she recognized the jet-black spine of A Return to Basic Shadowcasting, emblazoned with the deep amethyst symbol of the author. This book was illegal, but then again, the availability of it was deeply unsettling. It was almost as if it was being distributed. And to be so openly in the library of a noble of Alterac- if anyone other than her ever came in here she was willing to bet that they'd find a hundred other such books, looking harmless amongst old stories and cookbooks.

She leafed through the parchment pages and found that this copy had been annotated, notes neatly filled the margins and bottoms of pages, the handwriting slow and impeccably tidy. When she got to the page she had ended at the previous week, she found that in this copy, a small diagram had been sketched and annotated. It was a summoning circle, intricately inked and labeled as to its properties. She flipped back a page and found one nearly exactly the same, except that the hand-drawn one carried a title that set her blood humming.

_In convergence betwixt the stable state and death, a circle runéd for such._

Her mouth went dry as she read the small handwriting again. Was she reading it wrong? No, the writing was too neat. She flipped back- the book's circle was for summoning lesser demons. Breathless she squinted to read the small noted attached to parts of the circle. Runes she recognized, that she had been taught. Invocations only slightly modified. This was it. What she had been searching for all her short life, the sense of control she craved. Her family was falling apart, Dalaran mages couldn't tell one side of a ley line from the other, but this was what she needed.

She closed the book, a giddy feeling of excitement washing over her. It was dark, and she knew her mother slept early. Her father was probably passed out in his study where he had fallen. The servants wouldn't dare go into even her wing of the manor. She bustled out of the library, the soft cloth of her boots moving soundlessly, taking her automatically to the east wing, where she and her two younger siblings had once all lived together. She walked into her room, bolting the door behind her and pulling the windows and curtains shut.

The runes were simple to sketch, the magic flowing from the tip of her fingers easily as she placed them atop the wooden floorboards. Ebony may have been bored out of her mind in Dalaran, but boredom did not necessarily make for indolence. She had practiced and studied until her eyes would not open and her hands would not move to etch runes, until completely exhausted. This, in comparison to the heavy use of magic she was used to, was child's play. Once her circle was set, she decided it didn't feel right to do this kind of thing in these clothes, so she went and put on the new dress that had been laid out on her bed while she was in the library. It felt new and slightly stiff, but it looked the part. She already knew whom she was going to talk to. The man she reverently idolized, who was at the pinnacle of power. She knew he was dead, or at least that he _had_ died, so logically one could call him from the grave. Medivh, the Guardian.

She sat in her circle with the book, making finishing touches to her circle, from which she could feel an eerie power beginning to grow. It was unnatural, to pervert nature in such a way to reverse the final judgment of death, but the magic itself was incredibly powerful. The mana needed to actually raise people from beyond… monumentous.

Fear and anticipation saturating her limbs, Ebony began the process that would call the spirit of Medivh to her. O, the questions she wished to ask, the devouring lust for knowledge beyond that of anyone else that plagued her, waking or sleeping… to satisfy it would either kill her or keep her alive. She traced runes in the air as she whispered the incantation, letting the unearthly words of power rise from her breath and swirl around her, trapped within her circle, clustering together and moving with languid grace Ebony almost stopped her casting just to stare at them, but shook herself at the last moment and continued, feeling the power build up to a tingling pressure behind her eyes.

"_May I inquire as to who would dare summon me?"_

Ebony was knocked from her circle and into the dresser behind her, a nasty crack telling her that something was bleeding. She looked around wildly, looking for the voice, so loud it was that it had burst her eardrums, reverberating around her skull agonizingly. Slowly, the words of power converged in the centre of her circle and began to solidify, folding into robes and an old, wise face. This man was definitely not dead, that was for sure. Ebony panicked. What had she done? She knew next to nothing about Necromancy, and she'd attempted to summon one of the most powerful mages of all time? What was she thinking?

Medivh looked around the room until his eyes rested on her. They were human, but ringed with a light coating, the iridescent green of fel energy. She knew that Sargeras had once shared his body, but she had thought-

"_Stop thinking_," he said threateningly, Atiesh forming in his gnarled hand. "_Your thoughts do not interest me_."

The mage stepped out of the circle that was supposed to bind him. Chuckling to himself, he gave the room another view, eyes focusing on the books stacked everywhere, brought back with her on her visit, then the elaborate four-poster bed and the ornate furniture.

"_Rich little girl_," he cooed, bending over to the annotated book and rifling through it. "_Shadowcasting? __**Naughty**__ rich little girl."_ He looked at the circle she had used to summon him. "_This is a necromancy circle. I see no dead body. What were you going to put my spirit in?_" he tutted, then crossed over to where she was sitting, scared more than she'd thought. How stupid could she be?

"_A Dalaran mage? Doing necromancy?_" his eyes were wide, seemingly quite content to explore her room. "_Perhaps not a Dalaran mage much longer,_"

She frowned despite herself. He saw this and smiled. "_Why have you tried to summon me, just out of interest? I am an eternal, not dead. I merely came when you shouted my name out of curiosity._"

"I-I just wanted, uh, to… ask some questions," she said timidly, realizing now how meek that sounded. What questions would she have asked anyway? She had just rushed in there, hardly considering even her true motivations. Medivh looked at her with one eyebrow quirked, and his face suddenly shifted, becoming older, wiser, weary.

"_Knowledge has a price, little girl_," he said nastily, his eyes narrowing. "_One I doubt you will be willing, or indeed able to pay._" He smiled to show a row of yellowing teeth. Ebony began to panic. The whole wing of the house was abandoned, and the manor was large, the carpets thick and the walls solid. If Medivh wanted to…

"_You give me some interesting ideas,_" he almost purred, and she realized he could see her thoughts. "_But it has been a long time since I was summoned into Azeroth, and longer since then I have wanted to see what has befallen my old world. I'm not angry. In fact, I'll give you some advice, free of charge._" He flashed his teeth again, offering her the hand not holding Atiesh. "_Take it_."

She did, and he pulled her up with immeasurable ease. Afterwards, he held on to her hand and peered into her eyes, causing an electric chill to ricochet down her spine, almost paralyzing her. It was a dreadful, vulnerable feeling that he reveled in. He pulled her close and whispered a single, resonating word into her ear.

"_Scholomance_."

-

A/N: I am aware that I should be writing The Brotherhood, and rest assured I am :) When ideas come, they don't like staying down. Also, I wanted to try writing something a bit stiffer, you know? The Brotherhood's language, at least the narrative and the dialogue, is relaxed compared to this. I'm also feeling very sly that I know the connection between these 2 stories, which I'm sure Brotherhood readers will spot when I finish the next chapter of that. From this story, you can expect sporadic updates, every week or long or chapters about 5-7k long. I want to take this one to a while new level of perversion. (Though not the perversion you're thinking of, as in Marisa/Cony perversion. That is contained to Brotherhood.)

Please review and tell me what you think of this modified style and, if you're _really_ good, the connection between the two stories.

Also apologies for Medivh… I'm not 100% familiar with his lore, and I may have stretched it a bit to fit my own ends.

~Emmy


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I decided to continue this. I got a great burst of inspiration from another fic written by someone. Sorry that's vague, I'll look up what it actually was when my interwebz arr back.

Where Darkness Dwells

Chapter I

She brushed cobwebs away from her face, feeling around for anything that would tell her where she was. The ground was solid rock, smooth with a thousand scuffings. She was propped up in the corner, so she knew the room had walls and a ceiling. The darkness was so absolute that she saw no door, just faint flashes from behind her eyes that tricked her. The stench was unbearable, the thick, putrid reek of decay that laced the air she breathed. Idly, she wondered if she was going to die here like the dead bodies that were giving off the smell. It was not a pleasant thought, considering where she was.

-

The carriage pulled up beside the most intact of the ravaged houses outside Dalaran. A middle-aged mage poked his head out from the door and gave Connor a small smile while he opened the door for her. Ebony stepped out carefully, lest her dress get muddy. She tanked the stable-hand minimally and proceeded to enter the house. Other than the mage who had greeted her, there were three others, seated around the table with cold cups of tea. They were a sad, sad sight, she decided. These were people who had studied an infinite art, only to find an end to it. Idiots, lazing around, content to cast a couple of portals and receive a payment.

"Miss Ashcroft," the middle-aged one spoke to her politely. She hadn't bothered to learn his name. "One-way to Dalaran?"

"As normal." She nodded as he expertly began to create the rift in space, the familiar sights of Dalaran materializing. "Thank you."

He waved her off with unnatural cheer as she stepped into the blue-rimmed portal, the familiar sensation of her stomach being inverted washing over in a few seconds. She stepped into the quiet and contemplative gloom of Dalaran, quickly leaving the tall spire that the portal had transported her to, avoiding disrupting the higher mages who were talking in twos and threes around the building. She had to push through the masses of people all around Dalaran- the rapid influx in population was credited to the recent mobilization on the scourge, which in turn brought many of the bravest soldiers and fighters to Northrend, seeking to eradicate it altogether.

Ebony had rooms above an herbalist's shop. The dormitories that many of the mages slept in held nothing of interest for her, as she was a very private person. And if she had the money, why not?

The landlord bade her welcome, and she acknowledged the gnome before climbing the winding staircase. The door closed behind her and she sunk to the floor immediately, breathing in the scent of books and darkness that she adored so much. This was her world, the only place she felt safe- her impenetrable sanctuary.

There was much to be done. Much to study. Ebony had a paper on the catalytic qualities of Felweed in Arcane Transimiation to do, and several chapters of _Modern Magic_ that she had procrastinated with. However, this was not the work she proposed to begin now.

_Practically Perfect Portals_ was her first port of call. She smiled to herself at that. _Port_ of call. A pun. How very… uninteresting. Portals were not a particularly difficult skill to master, but what she proposed to do with them was. Due to the amount of magic flowing from the large population in main cities, teleporting there was easy. But to transport oneself to a place nearly deserted… was a whole other kettle of fish. There had to be an object of massive magical import that the portal could mirror itself from. She looked over a map of Azeroth. Seradane in the Hinterlands? That would mean a week's hike though. Acherus in the Eastern Plaguelands looked good, but the Ebon Blade weren't too kindly to strangers on board.

She didn't really care how kindly they treated her. She just needed to get to Azeroth.

To Scholomance.

-

She spent all night dreaming about the place. She knew… the basics. It was on an island in the middle of a lake in the Western Plaguelands. Something about Kel'Thuzad.

But, _necromancy_…

It sent a shiver up her spine. Ebony took a very careful look at the situation. She had an uncontrollable urge to do it, but at the same time, she had been brought up the same as all humans. She knew the Scourge. She knew what they did… what she would sign herself to. She would kill people and enslave them for eternity to the Lich King. She would butcher and slaughter and kill people. Maybe innocents. That was the catch.

Could she live with that? She thought idly. Killing people. These people. Humans elves, orcs, whatever. Could she commit herself to that life with the same fervor with which she studied magic?

The answer was, of course, yes. Her conscience didn't even squirm. That was sort of worrying.

She shrugged it off.

Tomorrow she decided, she would go to her lecture. Then in the evening she would look at the portal book more. She would get her dusty tables out and look up the magical constants for Acherus. She would calibrate her ether link around that figure. Yes, it was possible. By Friday, she would be free. Once she had decided this, however, she was too excited to sleep. The noise never stopped in this city. Restless and irritated, she pulled a cloak over her nightwear and slipped into her slippers, sneaking downstairs and out of the shop. Even the most dedicated of traders was shutting down for the night now, and citizens and visitors were looking to other pastimes.

_Where will I go?_

Her question was answered by a loud crash from her left. Two paladins had gotten into an argument about something trivial. They were drunk. She looked around, not seeing any guards or members of the Kirin Tor to sort it out. A sword had clashed to the ground and the two men were nearly at blows. Sighing, she hurried over to them.

"Sirs, would you care to take this elsewhere? This is a residential area after sunset."

"I told you, you only serve to upset people!" The bearded paladin snarled, his attention straight back to his nemesis.

"Me? You're the one who suggested we take it out of the tavern! You're a good-for noth-" he didn't finished as Beard's fist connected with his jaw. Ebony slumped. Idiots. Narrow-minded, brazen pigs. These men were supposed to be paladins, just and brave upholders of the holy light. They looked like squabbling teenagers at the moment. With a flick of her wrist she shifted magic to kinetic energy and sent the two of them sprawling to opposite sides of the street. "No fighting here."

"_I _didn't do anything!" The clean-shaven one said. "_He_ hit _me_!"

"I honestly don't care," she said, her voice a drawl, "But I suggest that I never see you again."

Beard stood up, his ire transferred. "Are you threatening me, miss?"

She paused for effect. "Yes."

"Do you know who I am?"

"Would it make even an iota of difference?" she sighed and looked at the clean one. His eyes were flickering from Beard to her, as if sizing up which one to go for first. Making his decision, light began to gather in his hands.

She wasn't prepared to let him get any further, and thus let off a stream of arcane arrows, the small purple fissures of magic illuminating the street. Clean-Shaven was hit squarely in the chest and reeled backwards. Beard took this opportunity to pick up his sword. She would hardly believe that he actually planned to kill her, rather to assert his authority against this interloper. She wished that she hadn't gotten involved after all. Insomnia was going to kill her, one of these days.

Now, Ebony had been training to be a mage for a long time. She had participated in numerous duels, against magic users and melee-fighters alike. Thus, when she felt the cool metal of the flat of a sword hover near her carotid artery, practice took hold of her body. Magic flew out of her and pushed the coat of power that drifted near her skin outwards, strengthening it against physical and magical assault. Beard looked surprised that his sword was several feet away from where he had placed it a second earlier. Surprise quickly turned to anger and he sent a fist flying at her barrier. She felt the force of the blow as thought it was through a foot of padding.

Beard was angry now. She could tell that he'd been drinking. Perhaps he'd had an unfortunate event happen tonight. Perhaps he'd been injured. She didn't know, and didn't particularly care. The crash of a hammer against the other side of her shield heralded the return of Clean-Shaven. This was ridiculous. All she'd wanted to so is break their fisticuffs up, and now she was being battered by two burly paladins twice her size. What a night.

Worryingly, their drunken pounding was beginning to wear down her barrier. With a surge of effort, she sent out a shockwave of frosty force that tossed them several feet away from her and encased their feet in ice. She considered running away, to somewhere with more people, where they couldn't attack her… but something was stopping her. Some sort of niggling sense in the back of her head that said she had responsibility of these two. They needed to be put in their place. She needed to assert herself. It was a win-win situation, as far as her mind could see.

From her fingers spun a web of arcane fibers that launched on top of the two paladins, who were just managing to defrost themselves. Caught unawares, they were forced, spread-eagled, to the paving-stone floor.

"Why are you trying to assault me?" she asked, curious as to their reply. She was confident in her bindings.

Beard glared at her. "You got into something that's none of your business."

"It is my business if you're about to beat each other up while I'm trying to sleep." She lied, crossing her arms, wondering what to do to them next. She could knock them out and leave them in the sewers. She giggled a bit at that. And take their armour, leaving them in just their socks. She could hide it all around Dalaran.

_Don't be immature_. She reminded herself.

"You didn't need to throw us halfway cross Northrend to get your point across!" Clean-Shaven said his gravelly voice irritating her cultured ears.

"Evidently you wouldn't have noted anything else."

Beard looked at her dubiously. "Well, sorry. Can we go now?"

Subtle, she thought, looking disdainfully at him. No, the idea has fastened firmly onto her mind. These guys were drunk. She was cloaked. And besides, even if she got in any trouble, she was leaving soon anyway. It was the perfect chance.

"No."

They both cussed under their breath and resumed their struggle. Ebony, intoxicated by their despair, let fire crackle in her palms. She hit Beard first. Small balls of flame, singeing the outside of his breastplate. The unpleasant smell of burning hair and his cries of pain. She thought she'd better silence those. She moved over to them and knelt down, tightening her net until there was no slack. Beard tried to howl, but no sound escaped his open lips.

She placed her pallid hand on his breastplate, a tantalizing idea blossoming behind her eyes. Agonizingly slowly, she let heat flow from her hand onto the metal. Beard didn't feel it at first and he looked at her, confused. Soon, it was hot enough for him to notice through his shirt and his eyes widened. He tried thrashing around, but she had provided for that. Clean-Shaven looked on, unsilenced but wordless. Should she stop now?

The scent of burning flesh reached her nostrils after about a minute. It was foul, but she put up with it for dignity's sake. She imagined how Beard was burning under the heated metal. How his flesh would begin to sizzle. Should she stop now?

Had he learned his lesson through a few burns? She thought not. But when? How far would she go? What did he deserve?

This was too much to think about, so she tossed the thoughts aside and continued, now pumping heat at full-power. Her hand was unscathed, but the metal of the breastplate had begun to soften. She was smelting it, she realized. Should she stop _now_?

She licked her lips uncertainly. The heat was hard on her face, causing her to sweat. Beard was screaming silently. He was in pain. The metal bubbled beneath her fingertips and began to flow out of shape. She realized with horror that he was lying down and that his chest was the highest part of his body. The molten metal, before she could stop it, coursed like a sickly wave of slag from his torso over his neck and groin. It was… killing him.

Ebony snatched her hand away, but not before the deed was done. He spluttered for a few moments before the heaving and twitching of his body stopped. Foolishly, she let out a stream of ice to stem the molten flow. The metal hissed at the sudden temperature change at let out a plume of hot steam that she couldn't avoid. It hit her in the face and hands, burning her. Not very much, but still, unpleasant.

With a dry mouth she looked blankly at the man in front of her. He was dead.

She had _murdered _him.

Ebony turned away from the corpse and threw up her supper. Her hands shook. It was all very well to theorize about killing people, but now she'd done it… in such a gruesome way… she threw up again. A whimper came from behind her. It was Clean-Shaven. She'd forgotten.

What… what did she do now?

With a sickening realization, she knew that she couldn't let him go. The death of Beard had sobered him. He'd go straight to the Kirin Tor… give them a description. He must have seen her face when she was bending over Beard. The Kirin Tor was large, but she was unique. A girl, barely old enough to be an adult. Jet-black hair. Pale face. Strong magic. They'd put two and two together. How did she ensure his silence?

"I'm sorry, m-miss…" he said, terror misting his eyes over. "I never meant to harm you, I swear it. I was just angry. Forgive me."

Words were all good, but she could see in his eyes that he would tell. She knew it, and as she stared at him, he knew that she knew. Fear caused beads of perspiration to trickle down his brow, devoid as it was of hair.

What to do?

Ebony was becoming desperate now. The street was abandoned but all around there were lights and the distant sounds of people. She had to do something. Anything. To save herself. She was selfish, _that_ she had accepted long ago.

A cold pit of comprehension settled in her stomach when she looked again down at Clean-Shaven. Wordlessly, she reached out and placed a single finger of his forehead, mustering a trickle of frozen magic that flowed through her and straight into his body, freezing his brain and the rest of his organs. Flash Freeze. It was an easy way to die.

She was left with two bodies, both vastly heavier than herself. Where should she put them? Then she remembered that she was a mage and almost chuckled to herself. A minute later they were piles of ash next to armour. Then the next minute, they were nothing but a near-indistinguishable scorch mark on the paving stones.

-

"And so, Einhalder's geo-magnetic constant can be determined by inducing what into arcane parameters?" Master Whirt drummed his fingers on the polished wood of his desk as he looked around the lecture hall. "Anyone?"

Ebony put up her hand.

"Miss Ashcroft?"

"By contracting minor field fluctuations into a single object, you can substitute these for the focus of the magnetism and negate the need for a shared parameter binding."

Whirt looked at her with a look that contained both a small amount of pride in her, but also exasperation. She was too smart, she read too much. She left the other mages so far behind her that she made them look bad. And she knew it.

"Indeed, but in simpler terms, what could we induce instead?"

"A negatively charged reflex capacitor."

"And… Master Drelyn, how would we charge this capacitor?"

Drelyn looked up from his notes and opened his mouth, then shut it again. He checked the words in front of him and shrugged. "I don't know, Sir."

"Are you sure?"

"Just ask Ebony. She probably knows."

Whirt soured. "That isn't the point, Master Drelyn. In life, you will not have a handy Ebony Ashcroft at your disposal."

Many students were looking at her now. She knew they were jealous of her, of her limitless intelligence and dedication.

_Would they think the same thing if they knew what I did last night?_

Gods, no. They would spurn her, hate her, and even try to kill her themselves. For now, however, they remained envious with dislike. She leant back on her chair and stretched out her arms. The clock told her it was midday- soon they would break for lunch. She would sit alone, as per usual, and eat thought she wasn't hungry. She would waste away if she did not- though even with her self-forcing, she was malnourished. Everything was really just trivial in comparison to the death of the paladins. She felt as though people who looked at her could tell, could see the invisible blood on her hands. It didn't help that she was slightly burnt from the steam, and the skin was peeling.

Her lecture ended with murmurs of dissent. They stepped from the gloom of the hall into the gloom of the citadel, darkened and morose. Ebony liked it. It reminded her of the nooks and crannies of Manor Ashcroft that had seemed so huge when she was young. In the dark, she almost felt like she wasn't the most dangerous thing there.

She sat very quietly in the refectory, content to leaf through a book and eat at the same time. Around her mages discussed magic, or gossiped, or laughed with each other. Her lip curled disdainfully at their frivolity. They were blissfully ignorant of what she knew the world to be like. Better for them, she supposed.

The light changed and she looked up, conscious of another body invading her space. It was Whirt, a bowl of soup steaming in his hand. Only rarely did her teachers approach her out of the classroom situation.

"Eating alone, Ebony?"

"By choice." She replied, setting her glass of wine down on the table and peering at the old man from underneath her eyelids. Grey hair, thinning. Beard. Kind eyes. Same as every other man of his age.

"How are you finding your studies?" he asked cautiously. "I must admit, that theory you proposed in my lecture this morning is pretty high-level."

"I read a great deal." She shrugged.

"I had thought about suggesting that you move up a class, but it was likely to have been vetoed by the council." He eyed her hard. "They dislike you."

"Blunt, but true." She observed. "I make no pretence."

"Unfortunately for us." He smiled slightly. "What are you considering doing with yourself, Ebony?"

_Necromancy_. She thought dryly. "Still looking for a vocation."

Whirt looked troubled. He leant over the table as to keep his next words private. "Upon the council's behest… I tell you, as much as it pains me, that there is no place for you amongst the Kirin Tor."

She frowned at this revelation, even though she was not planning on staying out her full tenure in the Citadel. It hurt to hear it so directly, from such wise lips. Whirt saw that she looked distressed and placed a land on her forearm. "I am sure one as magnificent in our arts as you can find work elsewhere." His eyes nervously shifted. "Though I would pale if I saw you on the other side of the battlefield."

She stiffened. "Sir, to insinuate such a thing openly-"

"It is the truth." Whirt said with weight. "I would sorrow if I witnessed such a bright light as you snuffed out by darkness."

"It is none of your concern." She replied coolly, meeting his blue eyes. "I will no strain the Kirin Tor's resources much longer, I assure you."

"Ebony, that isn't what I meant," he insisted, his frown creasing into deep caverns. "Harm is in your future, and that is seen and decided. Whether you cause or are witness to it is unknown, but either way, I do not like what I see."

"I do not like what I hear either." She said, preparing to leave. "And I am not of the disposition currently where I care."

Whirt looked sadly at her, seeing in her eyes the mind that lurked beneath, a leviathan beneath a tranquil sea prepared to devastate the coastline. He bade her farewell with a small motion of the head and turned away, to be alone with his meal.

-

Ebony did not travel like her younger siblings, and reading could only prepare one to an extent. She bought the clothes that she needed but didn't have, as well as the ingredients to cast her portal, along with food and provision for her journey. A week's walking through the plaugelands was no walk in the park, certainly.

It was late the night after her packing that she eventually did leave. She paid off the rent on her rooms for a year- she would not have much use for money where she was going- much to the herbalist's delight. She would cast her portal beneath Dalaran, in Crystalsong Forest, where nobody could see or sense her. Her cloak, black as the tar pits of Un'Goro, shielded her from view as she slipped through the streets, heading for the luminescent purple crystal that would transport her down and out of Dalaran. The mages who manned the camp at the bottom would be sleeping at this time. She would have no problem.

Enjoying the jolt of magic from the teleportation crystal, she nevertheless quickly sought out the cover of the trees. At night, Crystalsong was pitch black under the shadow of Dalaran, save for patches of opalescence, dim light growing outwards from the crystals embedded in the land and the creatures who lived in it. The result of this was that Ebony couldn't adjust to the normal light or to darkness, and everything remained caught in a fuzzy haze, in which she couldn't quite discern shapes and distances. The back of her neck tingled with the exhilaration of being scared as she trudged through the undergrowth to a ruin, which she had studied and knew the magical properties of. Here she would cast her portal.

A small but lurid voice in her mind that often opposed her niggled at the resolve she had built up over the week, but her eyes were firmly set on her prize: the school of dark learning, the ruined castle on Caer Darrow. Scholomance.

Narrowing her eyes, she set down her pack and began to rummage around for her materials. A glowing rune carved onto a flat slab of rock. A pouch of soil from consecrated ground. Most importantly, a coil of metal, sleek as satin, bent and curved in such a way you would presume it was naturally in this state.

The rune went first, placed on the ground by her feet. She measured out masses of soil in equal parts and placed them around the rune before clutching the coil in a slightly sweating hand. She rolled up her sleeve and fitted it around her forearm, where her magic was channeled strongest. In lessons, they had only used small, no larger than her thumbnail, sheets of metal affixed to the backs of their hands for this. She still had the scar. Portals hurt, but any mage was willing to take the burning, itching annoyance for a few days to make gold.

The coil frozen against her perspiring skin, Ebony tentatively placed her index and middle finger on the rune, couched down. Words welled up behind her vocal chords, words older than she. They made their mangled path from their host to the air and into her reagents, the spark of arcane potency nearly forcing her to detach from the flow of power that she was tapping into. Dizzy, she clenched her teeth and pulled the things she needed to out of the stream of ether she was channeling through the coil on her arm- the location, foremost. Then, molecule-by-molecule, she envisaged herself- robe, pack everything. Before her, a flash of magic was the signal she was waiting for and she took her hand off the rune just long enough the grasp at the rift and tear it larger with the meager strength in her body. Sweat beaded on her brow as the words were torn out of her mind, spinning in a glistening vortex of runic magic as she reveled the rip in the time-space continuum.

Picking up her pack, she forced her body through the small rift before the Bronze Dragonflight noticed and shut it altogether. Portals, they did not mind, but illegal rifts like these they became easily concerned with. The coil on her forearm burned white-hot and she cried out in agony as she tumbled through to the ground on the other side, throwing up a cloud of spores. Her foot, the last thing to go through, was caught in the rapidly closing rift. She sacrificed her shoe and watched her old life peter out into a tiny glow- and then nothing.

She was _free._


End file.
